Oil, Power Politics and the Arab Awakening

LT.-COL. LEGGE: Brigadier Stephen Longrigg, O.B.E., and Doctor of Literature, is such a pre-eminent authority in his fields of knowledge--Oil and Power Politics in the Arab World--that I am certain, when he agreed last winter to speak to The Empire Club of Canada, he foresaw a continuing crisis in the Middle East this spring.

Scarcely more than two weeks ago, the Arab Oil Congress opened in Cairo. At the same time, the Arab League's propaganda machine continued its war-like tirades and assaults against Premier Kassem's infamous Iraq which is alleged to be controlled by Communists although accepted by Britain because Iraq is hostile to Nasser. Of course, the Iraqi Government and the Iraq Petroleum Company boycotted the conference but these abstentions have not inhibited controversy in the inflammable affairs of politics and petroleum. One of the speakers at the Oil Congress went so far as to raise the direct question of foreign oil companies and to say that a sovereign government, acting in the service of its people, would be justified in breaking a contract with an oil concessionary. This provocative thesis was sustained not by an Arab firebrand but by an American oil adviser.

In the same week, the military critic of the New York Times, Hanson W. Baldwin, analysed intelligence reports which seemed to indicate that the Soviet's penetrations towards Iraq and Iran were far more perilous than the blatantly advertised crisis scheduled for Berlin on May the 27th. And always in the background is the Soviet sensitivity to the need for oil, and this necessity has resulted in an expanding seven-year plan to double the present annual production of the U.S.S.R. by 1965. Thus Brigadier Longrigg's subject of "Oil and Power Politics in the Arab World" is entirely appropriate on this last day of April, 1959, and our speaker is ideally suited to describe this complex of crises.

Stephen Longrigg attended Oriel College, Oxford, and after service in Mesopotamia in the First World War, he was appointed a government official in Iraq. He became an orientalist and historian, publishing his first book on Iraq in 1925. Then in 1931 he joined the Iraq Petroleum Company and served for twenty years in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia. During the Second World War he rejoined the Army and after serving on the General Staff, was appointed Governor of the former Italian Colonies of Cyrenaica, Somalia and Eritrea. Brigadier Longrigg is also a linguist, lecturer and noted writer who has published many books on the Middle East. In 1955 his contributions to learning were recognized by Oxford University which awarded him its coveted degree of Doctor of Literature.

Gentlemen, I am pleased to introduce to The Empire Club of Canada Brigadier Stephen Longrigg, distinguished soldier, oilman, public servant and man of letters, who will tell us about the many-sided story of "Oil, Power Politics and the Arab Awakening".

BRIGADIER LONGRIGG: The subject of my talk--which was not chosen by me--suggests a tripartite content, and I shall try to say something on each of the three parts mentioned in it, and also on the connection between them.

The subject is a very familiar one, and I am afraid that nothing I shall be able to say will be new to those among you who keep abreast of Middle Eastern matters. I shall reveal no hitherto unsuspected facts (since probably I don't know any) and I shall make few attempts to prophesy the future. My best hope is that I may at some point suggest a line of thought unfamiliar to some of my listeners. The opinions I express are, of course, strictly personal to me. The oil of the Middle East is not a commodity found in all those countries, nor even in a majority of them. The Yemen, the Aden protectorate, Western and Central and South Eastern Arabia, the Sudan, Libya, Jordan, Syria, and the Lebanon have no oil of their own at all. Egypt has a small but very useful quantity. Israel and Turkey have only a very little. The only oil-rich countries are those of Iraq, Persia and Saudi Arabia and the three tiny Persian Gulf principalities of Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain; but Jordan, Syria and Lebanon--and Egypt with its Canal--have a very important transit function.

This Middle East Oil is a vast natural resource which has come to light in an area of age-long poverty and it can make--or rather it is already making--an extremely important contribution to their potential--and, let us sincerely hope, to their happiness. Oil in that region was first discovered fifty years ago, but its output only became important from a world point of view during the last two decades and really only acquired its present outstanding position in the last ten years. Today it forms an extremely significant (and extremely timely) contribution to world resources; and its development by the most modern technologies and by means of enormous western-owned industrial installations, forms a striking and highly picturesque contrast to the simple and relatively primitive scenes and modes of life in the countries themselves, whose economy oil is in process of transforming.

Middle Eastern oil is found in remarkably favourable conditions. To begin with, the actual oil-containing structures in the earth are highly unusual in their vast scale and their regularity. They seem to be copied from the text books. They lend themselves to steady, regular, economical development with the prospect of maximum ultimate recovery. The productivity of individual wells is on a scale hundreds per cent greater than that found elsewhere in the world--for instance in North America--and this means that comparatively few wells easily produce what is required. Single wells producing 50,000 or in some cases 100,000 barrels a day, are not at all uncommon. As to quality, in spite of rather too high a sulphur content, Middle Eastern oil is perfectly manageable, pumpable and refinable. The oil fields offer easy access. They are surrounded by no marshes, jungles or wild mountain-ranges; they lie in open country, flat or undulating or hilly. The climate of the region is admittedly hot but is far from unhealthy. There is available a labour force of willing and intelligent workers who acquire the necessary skills, and resign themselves to an industrial type of life, with great rapidity, and, thanks to the efforts of the great British and American oil companies in exactly this sense, the day is not distant when almost the whole of technical as well as non-technical processes will be carried out by natives of these countries. As to outlets, there is easy access to deep water nearly everywhere by shorter or longer pipe lines, and the relative remoteness of the area from the world's major markets merely means a few cents a barrel added to the cost.

The production from Middle Eastern fields in 1958 was not more than some 215 million tons of crude: that is about a quarter of the total oil used in the world that year. This amount, though second only to United States production in the same year, is petty compared with the output which, one can be quite certain, will be demanded and realised in a few years. I have no doubt that by 1969 Middle Eastern production will be of the order of 400 million tons a year and by 1979 will probably be little short of 1,000 million tons, an amount far greater than any other region is at all likely to be producing. As to "proved reserves", they are such as to make such promises as these easy of fulfilment; they amount in fact to something between two-thirds and three-quarters of the total liquid petroleum resources so far discovered in the world.

In passing, how likely is it that oil itself will cease to be in demand in the fairly near future, when atomic power really gets under way? It is, in my view, not likely at all; the world's demand for energy increases annually and will continue to do so, and I have no doubt that all forms of energy-production--the atom, oil, coal, hydroelectricity and anything else which may be mobilised to help--will have to play their part, and the part of oil will always be a major one. Nor should one forget that there will always be purposes for which petroleum will remain far the best power-producing material, just as it will always supply what is required for the great (and potentially enormous) petro-chemical industry.

One other point, extremely relevant to my present subject: that is the present and unquestionably the equal future dependence of Northern, Western and Southern Europe, together with Africa and most of Asia and Australasia upon the Middle East for their petroleum. Since the demand for oil will rise enormously in those areas which at present use very little, and will rise scarcely less in the great industrial areas where usage is already great, supplies for all these purposes must come from somewhere. Now there are in the Eastern Hemisphere, outside the Iron Curtain, no signs at present of any supplies capable of furnishing these needs, and it is not, I fear, very likely that future discovery--in spite of most active and expensive exploration going on in literally scores of countries--will reveal anything upon the scale required. Everything points, therefore, to the continuance of Middle Eastern oil as the unique supplier of the Eastern Hemisphere--unless an alternative source can be found in the Western Hemisphere, that is in North or Central America? And how likely is this? It is not very likely. If the Western Hemisphere can remain self-sufficient in oil for (one hopes) a fair number of years, that, I am afraid, is the most that can be reasonably hoped for. Venezuela has a large exportable surplus which is eagerly gobbled up by her South American neighbours and by the United States and Canada. The latter is herself today an importing country, and the United States, which has always been the giant in the oil world, both in production and consumption, is today a major importing area. Limited supplies may indeed still, upon occasion, cross the Atlantic from West to East, but this will be only in the form of special products, or on a quite short term basis to supply some sudden need. The old days when the Western Hemisphere regularly supplied the Eastern have gone forever, and the job inevitably falls now and hence forward on this small group of Persian Gulf countries of which I am speaking.

It would be highly satisfactory to be able to say at this point that the Middle Eastern area, so vital to us, is one of stability and goodwill towards us; but unfortunately the very opposite is the case. The region has been for some years, and still is, one of restlessness, disturbance and discontinuity. It is the area in which since the early 19th Century an ancient Islamic and almost static civilisation, which carried no political responsibilities and which received no political training, has been invaded by all the upsetting, sophisticating, sometimes corrupting forces of the West. Through every sort of door--books and papers, educational institutions, missions, archaeologists, engineers and men of commerce, shipping lines, telegraphs, diplomats and travellers--there has surged into the Middle East the ideas, assumptions, conceptions and practices of, Europe. This flow of influences was not pre-selected: it contained equally the good and the bad, it often failed to convey to its uncritical recipients whatever we feel to be the best and most precious elements in Western civilisation, and led them to accept instead much that was inferior or unessential. And the Middle Eastern acceptance of this mixture, now in progress for a century and a half, has inevitably been accompanied by the loss of a good deal that was valuable and stable or stabilising (as well as dignified, pleasing and picturesque) in the old civilisation of Western Asia. It has led to a weakening and often a destruction of old loyalties, decencies and restraints, and to the formation of a hybrid type of culture in what has been called (too severely, I think) a moral vacuum. These things are due to too rapid an evolutionary transition carried out in an especially sensitive part of the world--a world too restless, too full of problems and uncertainties to allow the Middle Eastern peoples a tranquil field in which to realise this most difficult phase of evolution.

But of the reality of the Arab Awakening, there is no doubt at all. On the cultural and social side, where the movement began, there is a record of much growth and change, in writing, in social habits, material equipment, ideas and aspirations. In the political field there have been successive phases, still moving and changing, which have brought us to the interesting and disquieting phenomena we observe today. The most obvious of these, the child of modern political self-consciousness and of an emotional national pride, is Arab nationalism, still the dominant force in the whole area. It is a movement based on conceptions borrowed essentially from Europe, since political nationalism is unknown in Islam and indeed the conception of a temporal state (other than one embodying the whole Moslem community itself) was foreign to the great days of Islam. The Middle Eastern nationalism of today often carries qualities of devotion and sincerity and with its content of real patriotism certainly cannot be condemned off-hand by us, whatever its occasional extravagances; but it is highly emotional, often it is displeasingly boastful, egotistical, narrow, suspicious of non-Arab outsiders, sensitive with the touchiness of adolescence to imaginary affronts. In the looks which Arab nationalism directs abroad, there is today a strong element of suspicion of the foreigner and above all suspicion of, and ill-will towards, the Western nations who were for scores or hundreds of years the powerful and envied leaders of the world, who had the wealth and progress which the Middle East admired but could not attain--and who too obviously took for granted their own superiority. By reaction against all this, the Middle Eastern peoples (and with them, of course, many other nations of Asia and Africa, since this is only part of a world-wide phenomenon of emergence and retaliation) today judge the West with harshness and rancour and one looks sadly and in vain for any substantial remains of the good-will and respect which Western nations believed only recently that they enjoyed in that area--and which some may feel they deserved by their very real services rendered there. On the contrary, the atmosphere in Arab political circles today in almost every country is, as we all know, predominantly anti-Western. The West is blamed for events in the remote and also in the recent past, is blamed for its alleged lack of sympathy, its bad manners and its airs of superiority. It is blamed for its tenacity in matters affecting its rights or claims, and for its failure to gratify every Middle Eastern demand; and to these often unjust and unhistorical allegations (all of which are swallowed whole by local patriots and by every student) is today added the ill-will which survives from the now vanished Mandate System imposed by the League of Nations in 1920, with the best intentions; from memories of military intervention during the second world war; and from the foundation of the State of Israel, greatest of blows to Arab pride and greatest of all the offences of the West at Arab expense; and finally of course from the still unforgiven Suez episode.

In the international sphere, the Arab nationalists of today officially profess neutralism, desiring to avoid commitment to either of two great power blocs, while enjoying the benefits from both. This neutralism corresponds to a psychological need of non-involvement, to a simple craving for safety, to Arab exclusiveness, and to fear of adhesion to what may turn out to be the losing side. The policy has sometimes in Egypt and Syria, and today in Iraq, seemed to Western observers to lean a good deal too far towards the East--and indeed there is today a quantity of obvious Russian influence in Baghdad which we cannot think healthy or pleasant to observe. Nevertheless, neutralism is still the foreign doctrine of all the nationalist Arab states, even though in Egypt at this moment it seems to mean not so much a good or tolerable relation with both blocs as bad terms with both. The gaining and retention of powerful foreign friends, which Arab states would have no great difficulty in achieving if they liked, seems curiously enough not to be among their desiderata--or rather takes second place, or no place, compared with the expression of their own angry frustrations.

Within the Arab world, nationalism is today flowing in two easily distinguishable channels. One is that favoured by the President of Egypt, Gamal Abdul Nasser, and by his followers in every Arab country. It is that which, by an extension of the United Arab Republic, would integrate, or at least closely federate, the now separate Arab states, and would weld them into a single political unit, a great Arab Nation intended fitly to represent in the political world the very real Arab unity which already exists in the linguistic, cultural, historical, traditional, religious and social world. "Nasserites" therefore in Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, and in the Persian Gulf principalities, press and agitate by all the means at their command (which of course vary from country to country) for a sacrifice of sovereignty by the now independent countries (such as Syria made in February, 1958) and adhesion to the U.A.R. This is the Pan-Arab view: ideologically attractive but pregnant with immediate psychological and administrative difficulties. The alternative view is that held by the governments of the non-absorbed states. It is, that their present separate statehood suits them best, while not precluding close and fraternal relations with and among their sister Arab states. They are proud of and mean to preserve the national independence which they have painfully gained since 1918, and the idea of becoming a non-sovereign part of an Egypt-dominated state (as it would certainly be) with loss of prestige and status and jobs, and probably part of their revenue too, does not appeal to them. It is a clash between these two views, expressed with increasingly angry emotion and mutual accusations in true Arab style, which led to the attempts of the U.A.R. to take over Jordan and Lebanon in 1958, and to the explosive relations between Cairo and Baghdad today. It is the desire for support against the Nasserite unifiers that seems to have driven the present military ruler of Iraq, Brigadier Abdul Karim Kassem, to accept so much Communist support, to which recent reports from Baghdad testify. And persuasive over the whole field of Arab public life is the emotional individualism, the intransigence, the lack of restraint and compromise which marks the Arab character in political life. Indeed these features of the Arab public character, which contrast so strangely with their outstanding social gifts and charms, their lively intelligence and humour, are those which make their political inter-relations so difficult and stormy, render the task of foreign diplomats an unenviable one, and preclude the establishment of any real democracy among them, since the qualities of give-and-take and tolerance which it demands are conspicuously lacking.

The Middle Eastern region itself is, by general consent, a vital one in politico-strategic terms by its position astride three continents, its control of narrow seas, and the great trunk routes used by peoples and armies throughout history (routes and sea-lanes which, incidentally link the Eastern and Western members of our own Commonwealth of Nations) and its ports and pipelines and air-fields. It is a region occupied by four major culture-groups (the Turkish, the Persian, the Israeli, and the Arab) and by a score of independent states of many geographic and economic orientations, and in many stages of evolution, all politically immature, all militarily weak, and yet all so placed in the world of sentiment and religion that their decisions and their destinies must greatly influence those of other nations (for instance, those of South East Asia with their teeming millions of Moslems). It is the unique homeland of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. With all this, the presence of vast oil resources cannot but create stress and strain both within the area as between the oil-rich and the rest, and also from outside it--in the attitude of, for instance, Russia, towards an area so near, so rich and so weak. A very particular interest is inevitably taken in these areas also, it is obvious, by the nations of Europe and America whose great oil companies are carrying out the tasks of oil development.

The Middle Eastern area is the immediate neighbour of Russia, and that on the side of the Russian Empire's "soft under-belly", the least secure of all its frontiers: and the U.S.S.R. professes (exactly as Hitler did in 1936-39) to fear "encirclement". Hence its dislike of allegedly encircling action taken by the Baghdad Pact powers. Herein lies one of Russia's motives for her attempted penetration of the Middle East; but there are other motives also, a good deal more real. One is the mere crude expansionism which was the keynote of Russian policy in Western Asia throughout Czarist times--a policy rewarded by the acquisition of Central Asia and of trans-Caucasia in the 18th and 19th centuries, and a policy frankly admitted by Molotov in 1942. Another clear motive is the desire to upset the world balance of power by the acquisition of this supersensitive strategic area containing a dozen sovereign states, and to use these, perhaps, as a bridge-head for further penetration in Asia and Africa. And, finally, the U.S.S.R. would prize nothing so much as the chance, by subverting and misleading the Middle Eastern oil-producing states, to cause these to repudiate their oil concessions with the Western companies or to demand unconscionable terms or somehow else to achieve the extremely serious blow to the West which is implicit in the withholding of these vital supplies.

If these, however crudely expressed, are the Russian objectives in the Middle East, what are ours? They are, I believe, objectives completely unexceptionable and in no way deserving of the antipathy and abuse with which the West is almost universally treated in the Middle East nowadays. We ask nothing irregular, unusual or privileged. We desire that region to be progressive, prosperous, peaceful and above all stable in its society and its government. We should like those nations to avoid any excessive drawing-near to the Soviet bloc simply because we are sure that it would in the long term be disastrous to them as well as very serious to us. We would wish to be in a position to help, if need be, certain old friends of ours in the area--the Persian Gulf Shaikhs and Sultans, the rulers in the Aden Protectorate--friends whom we cannot simply abandon to be gobbled up (as they certainly would be) by Saudi Arabia and the Yemen. We would like to be sure that the great trans-regional communications shall be available for our use, just as for that of any other friendly nation. We want continued access to the oil-fields. Finally, we want good will--as much as possible from as many elements as possible, in place of the too-obvious ill-will. Given that, all else would follow--if only we knew just how to set about getting it! I have no doubt at all that the "problem of the Middle East", so often vaguely referred to as an unsolved conundrum, is simply the problem of attracting the confidence and friendship of the elements in that region in whom power is vested, so that we and they can pull together--insofar as we, being foreigners, are allowed to help in pulling--towards the realisation of stability, progress and a better life for them. If the problem were (as it would have been in the old days) one of asserting military strength, imposing discipline or exacting privileges, it would be relatively easy; but in the conditions of the mid-20th century with so many brand-new sovereign states all articulate and self-conscious, and all inviolable and free to do practically anything with complete impunity, the situation of a Western power with important interests in those countries is not a happy one.

Because it is a matter of immediate interest, I will here pose the specific question "how likely are the Governments of the Middle East oil-producing states to cancel concessions, or to make continued operation of them impossible by a policy of pin pricks or inordinate demands, or to nationalise and throw the companies out?" One must remember that nationalism in some form is undoubtedly a long term objective of most of the Governments concerned: it would flatter their amour-propre, and it would be politically popular. Such a policy is favoured even today by not a few hot-headed politicians, and it would have (as I have said already) any backing that the U.S.S.R. could give it. It happened in Persia in 1951 and, with economic considerations always taking a very poor second place to political in Arab countries (and in Persia), the possibility of such an eventuality cannot be denied.

At the same time, against Governmental or popular illwill, such as could lead to disruptive action in the sphere of oil supplies, there are also fairly strong inhibiting factors. These are obvious and familiar enough. The first one is simply that of geese and golden eggs. The immediate effect of a disruption of a company's operations, if it came to that, would be stoppage of Government revenue--the revenue which, being up to 90 per cent of the total receipts of some of these Governments, sustains their development schemes, their public services, their civil and military staffs--and everything else that has to be paid for. Add to this, a stoppage (which would follow) of the local purchases of the Company and local contracts, and the dismissal, I suppose, of hundreds or thousands of well-paid Company's workers. All this would, in such a case, add up to a crushing blow to the Government, to public solvency and prosperity.

An ill-affected Government may well realise today, moreover, that such a stoppage would probably not be followed by a collapse and surrender by the company. Unless all or most of the middle-eastern producing States closely synchronized their anti-company moves (which I can scarcely imagine), any one such action would more probably simply step up the production of its neighbours. If Iraq and/or Persia went out of production, it would not be too difficult for the companies concerned to get their requirements, at least as a short-term substitute from Kuwait or Saudi Arabia or Qatar-and so on!

Governments may have learnt, by now, another lesson from Persia: it is that, having precipitated a stoppage in your oil-industry, you may find it far from easy to get started again. Local workers can undoubtedly produce oil from the existing wells, can even drill more wells, can operate pipelines and storage and simple distillation units; but what about working capital, essential supplies from abroad, the indispensable outside industrial and commercial connexions, teams of fully competent technologists and managers and research-workers, and above all outlets--that is markets, and people to send tankers to your ports and carry away and pay for your oil. Merely to sell a few cargoes of crude to the Japanese or Italians is very, very far from running the industry so as to produce anything at all like the present revenues, or to secure the future. Experience in Persia showed that a complete rebasing and restarting of the industry takes not weeks but years-and the revenues lost in the meanwhile can never be recovered, even if the markets, or some of them ultimately can. In a word, the now obvious difficulty, delay and loss in restarting the industry, once stopped, under whatever auspices, might well give pause to enthusiastic nationalisers.

And there are other probable inhibiting factors. One is, that in any one of the transit states, disruptive action would not penalize only the company (and of course the transit State itself), it would penalize also (as we saw in 56,/57) the countries farther east whose oil was denied its pipeline or canal outlet. Anti-western fervour and malice are strong stimulants, and pan Arabists in Iraq or Saudi Arabia might not relish protesting against their neighbours' actions so inspired: but, since they've now experienced, in terms of millions of dollars irrevocably lost to them, just what this sort of thing can mean, they will possibly henceforth use their influence against such measures.

As for all this Middle Eastern area as a whole, its trials, stresses and troubles, which worry us all so much, it is certain that there is no quick or easy formula for curing them. These troubles come from deep underlying causes, psychological and historical, which will not soon be removed. No expert, and no Foreign Minister, will be able to say one fine morning "Gentlemen, congratulate me! I have found the answer." There is no single answer of that kind at all and moreover the other great participant, the U.S.S.R., who has no intention of withdrawing her efforts in that area, is a very skillful and formidable opponent. Nevertheless I believe that all is far from being lost. I believe that i f we show patience and restraint, more than we have sometimes done in the past: and i f we have towards these people the same sort of goodwill that we are never tired of asking them to show us, and a high measure of human comprehension and sympathy, and if we scrupulously respect their sovereign status and their right to choose their own forms and policies, and give them reasonable practical help without strings (and without any parade of our generosity) when they ask for it, and if we improve our publicity and information output and if we try to understand the successive situations as seen through their eyes, then I think there is hope for us. There is hope, too, in the healing action of time, in the growing realisation of our real fundamental identity of interests with theirs, and in the probability that our opponents will, in their turn, make bad mistakes and incur odium. Specifically, I would say, let us be aware that the Middle Eastern situation is essentially a new one on the world stage, and let us, above all, avoid resented interventions and galling interferences and cling instead to what I believe to be the policy of true wisdom--that of (in two words) benevolent non-involvement.

THANKS OF THE MEETING were expressed by Mr. Harold Lawson, First Vice-President of the Club.